


You are not THE NIGHT

by seerofreproductiveanomalies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Crossover, M/M, gill boners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seerofreproductiveanomalies/pseuds/seerofreproductiveanomalies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eridan tries to bring to fruition a kismessissitude between himself and the Dark Knight. And because he's Eridan, it doesn't work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You are not THE NIGHT

**Author's Note:**

> About a week ago a friend shared with me smut pairing Batman and Eridan Ampora. It was absurd, but it was also amusing. I decided to try it myself, and I failed. Also, this is a generic Batman - more the idea of Batman as a character than anything else, because I don't know as much about comics as I'd like. Also I suppose this is technically an AU where Eridan exists in the DC universe, as do... all of the other trolls? I don't know I tried not to put too much thought into this, because if I had I would have to hate myself even more.

Your name is ERIDAN AMPORA, and you are not THE NIGHT.

You may not be THE NIGHT, but you have a well-developed appreciation for it, not only in the literal sense, but in a much gaudier, metaphorical one. In bygone days, you used it to extremely poor effect in several albums of bad poetry which may or may not be stained with the deep purple of your tortured adolescent tears.

But you’ve since abandoned literal poetry and fled, cape whipping around your scrawny ankles, into territory much more metaphorical, and a thousand leagues more pretentious. 

Pretension doesn’t suit you. But no one was ever willing to be around long enough to tell you enough times to have it mean anything, and as such you’re standing, knobby shoulders in a pronounced slouch, cape pulled around your slim silhouette of a frame. Underneath your beaky nose, you look something like a malnourished vulture raised on puffed-up self-importance and only the barest leathery scraps of good judgment.

By every measure of the word, you are insufferable.

But you aren’t thinking about your myriad short-comings. If you were you might curl yourself up in a ball, bid this cruel world goodbye, and plummet off the ledge to which your grey talons are clinging with a singular desperation you usually reserve for interactions with sentient beings. But thankfully for you, and of dubious benefit to everyone else, you’re watching the city below with one half of your mind and considering what you think is a cunning plan with the other.

If you had even a vague sense of self-awareness, you would known that it is not cunning. Nor is it clever, creative, or particularly innovative.

If you had even a modicum of perspective, you might see that it hurdled over unwise straight into an area one of your, hmm, friends might have called a BULGE-TEARING TACTICAL CATASTROPHE UNFIT EVEN FOR A BILGE SUCKING SEA DIPSHIT WHOSE THINKPAN IS SHALLOWER THAN A TIDAL POOL FULL OF ANY AFFECTION ANYONE HAS EVER FELT TOWARDS YOU IN THE HISTORY OF PARADOX SPACE.

Because you don’t, you would have thought he was coming on a little strong, and then you would have come on stronger.

But you didn’t contact him. It’s not like a mutant-blooded freak drowning in his own trumped-up self-hatred would have had anything useful to say. And he didn’t have any respect for the villainous arts, of which you were, you said to anyone who listened and everyone once they didn’t, a prime practitioner. Why else would you have this cape.

And speaking of, you pause in your reveries of villainy and pretension long enough to see another, infuriatingly higher quality, cape, whip across the shadows below. Spreading your own cape out like two scrawny, silken wings, you jump, hoping you’ll glide gracefully into the streets.

You try to follow the figure from a safe distance, staying just far enough away to flicker in and out of definitiveness. If you were honest, you didn’t know why you were trying to bait him into a game of cat and mouse in which you were both, and you were still losing. It would have made more sense to wait for him there, not only to save yourself the effort of chasing after him with long, hurried strides and short, struggling breath, but to have some eye over the machinations of your latest in a long line of brilliant master plans.

But you don’t have time for introspection, and you lose yourself in the dainty, muffled strike of royal purple boot against city underfoot.

 

 **Eridan: Be the other guy.**

You are now the other guy, and this time, you _are_ THE NIGHT. 

You’re also tired of this bullshit.

You’re the goddamn Batman.

You aren’t completely sure who this upstart punk is. Among other things, he doesn’t have a cohesive persona, and his name…

As you glide through the city’s hushed streets, bent and billowing over your bike, you try not to give _him_ too much thought. Him with his limbs sticking out at weird angles, as if he’d tried to force growth out and forgot about proportion. Him with his own pretentious cape, and an unshakeable stench of deep desperation.

The Bat Signal shines against the cloudy night sky, roughly lined up with the aquarium, and when you realize where you’re going, you groan. It’s _him_ again. You wonder, idly, if he’s managed to harangue anyone else into joining his absurd schemes. But as you lean down further over the handles, pushing the bike to move forward that much more quickly, so you can get it over with that much sooner, you assure yourself he hasn’t.

Then he might actually be a threat.

 _Then_ he might be anything other than a bizarre nuisance.

 

 **Batman: Scope out the aquarium.**

You do. It’s empty.

There’s a slight but unmistakable scent of sea water over the vague disinfectant and the haze of too many visitors pushed too close together. It follows the path visitors are instructed to take – through tunnels lined with glass, over bridges, across the Antarctic section.

It is almost as ridiculous as the person who undoubtedly left it.

You follow it anyway.

You follow it, at ease but agitated, frustrated by how perfectly still and undisturbed everything is. Fish drift lazily at every turn, tanks undisturbed, exhibits left standing, Big Items left, unperturbed, resting wherever they should be, as if passed by without a glance.

If you were trailing anyone else, you might be worried.

But this kid…

He inspired an entirely separate kind of unease, a clammy certainty that something was amiss.

Something strange.

Something… uncomfortably intimate.

And as you turn a final corner, into a wide room lit at the edges with a dull blue shine, you see it.

The tank at the end, stuck into the wall, only a huge glass circle visible against black, like an oversized porthole, is cracking. Water spurts in small streams from slowly widening cracks, and before you can move, before you realize that it is about to break, a small flood pushes against the epicenter of the break, rushing out to fill the cool, carpeted floor, sloshing against the walls and knocking you entirely off your feet.

You push yourself up again in time to see a huge bivalve, large enough to fit a human or even… even something close enough to look familiar, but far enough to be uncanny.

And stupid enough to fit inside.

The oyster opens, top half swinging up and back to fall into the wall with a thud that makes you, and the room, shudder.  

You have never been more horrified in your life.

 

 **Batman: Succumb to temporary trauma. Let someone else take over.**

You are now what’s inside the giant oyster.

You are grey-skinned, completely wet, arguably the least sensible being in Gotham city and clad in nothing but too many tawdry rings, a cape, and shamelessness.

You aren’t sure why the other guy is covering his eyes and moaning. For one thing, you’re nothing, you think, less than the height of sea dwelling perfection. Your slim, royal bone structure, sharp jaw, purple eyes – the stuff of dreams. The _kind_ of dream is, of course, irrelevant.

And for another, you’ve arranged the cape tastefully. It may be clinging in a way that suggests it is as desperate for the handsome endowment between your legs as, you imagine, anyone who’s ever bothered to think about it, but it’s still safely tucked away.

You are laying on your side, one leg draped over the other, both laid out languorously against the plump and somewhat sticky tongue you’re propped against. You try looking seductive – eyes half-lidded, mouth puckered – but the other guy is still crouched, seemingly frozen, the balls of his fists pushed against his eyes, as if he could rub them clean through force and sheer determination.

So that isn’t ideal.

You get up, letting your cap flap against your back, exposing the whole, ahem, glorious mystery previously covered. And you walk forward, feet splashing through the puddles soaking through the floor, hips swinging, bony pendulums marking out the desperation you’d never admit to with each sideways sway.

“What,”  you lean down and whisper against the Batman’s ear, the word popping against your lips like an untoward bubble, “brings you here.”

He straightens up, and he seems an impenetrable shadow, his own costume soaked and slick and shiny in the dull emergency lights. “No.”

You slide against his side, and he tenses.

 _Good_ , you think, but you shouldn’t.

Your skinny arms snake around his shoulders, huge and solid, a straight, unrelenting line against which your own limbs look like the skeletal remains of some withered, washed-up sea creature. You place your head against his chest, clammy grey skin against slick black fabric, and you try to catch the sturdy thump in his chest, matching it to the drowned, watery glub in your own.

You stay there, wet skin against wet clothes, makeshift villain glued to hero.

Your bulge begins to … _move._

And as a single tendril flicks against the side of the Batman’s leg, in a moment, his arms shoots out and grabs you around the throat, throwing you backwards to lie limp, legs bent against the floor.

He stares, eyes hard as flint, set into a face that says, as definitively as any can, _don’t fuck with me._

You can feel your gills flare under the smooth, thick rubber of his gloves against your neck, straining under the pressure, inflamed from a kind of perverse arousal.

He releases you, and you fall into the water with muffled, watery thump. He leans down, very closely. “ _No_.”

And then he leaves, swiftly, silently. You watch him stride down the empty hallway, emergency lights casting a dull sheen against the cape drawn tight around him. The gills in two delicate lines down your ribs flutter, and those against your neck flare, the bony covering standing straight against your neck, testament to a feeling as black as your would-be paramour-come-rival’s costume, persona, and demeanor.

All things considered, you think, pulling your cape back across your lap, that went better than expected. 


End file.
